"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

September 06, 2007

You Really Can't Get There From Here

This archival image was taken by one of my Gr-great Aunts in Petersham, Massachusetts back in the 1920s. It depicts a marvelous signpost, and one can imagine motoring along country roads with Aunt Het and Aunt Bess in their old Model T. But you could not take that trip today, and you could not have taken it even in the 1940s. Not to Dana, anyway.

Dana was one of four rural communities in the Swift River Valley of Massachusetts that disincorporated in 1938 and flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir and supply urban areas in Eastern Massachusetts desperate for water. Along with neighboring Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott, Dana ceased to exist. The Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission purchased more than 60,000 acres in the Swift River Valley and acquired the rest by eminent domain. Land from the four towns outside the Quabbin basin was annexed to surrounding communities, including Petersham.

"While the buildings in the towns flooded by the reservoir were destroyed, the cellars were left intact. The remnants of the buildings and roads can occasionally be seen when the water level is low, and old roads that once lead to the flooded towns can be followed to the water's edge. Not all elements of the towns were flooded, however. Town memorials and cemeteries in the four towns were moved to the Quabbin Cemetery, located on Route 9 in Ware, just off of the Quabbin's lands. Many other public buildings were moved to other locations."

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld has written a novel about the drowning of the Swift River Valley. There is also Quabbin chronology here. Today the Quabbin is the largest expanse of undeveloped land in the Commonwealth, so wild that evidence of catamount has been found here. Boston and surrounding communities have potable water in sufficient quantity, as the Quabbin holds 412 billion gallons when filled to capacity. But you won't find Dana on Mapquest, or any sign of this signpost in Petersham.

I had also heard that his story The Color of Outer Space was influenced by this reservoir, though here is what Wikipedia has to say in the entry for this book:

"Will Murray says that Lovecraft was actually inspired by the Scituate Reservoir in western Rhode Island. Murray cites an unpublished letter in which Lovecraft mentions a trip he took "through the doomed Swift River Valley" shortly before the Quabbin Reservoir was built. The journey reminded Lovecraft of the sadness he felt over the Scituate Reservoir project, "where a vast amount of territory was flooded in 1926 [and] which caused me to use the reservoir element in 'The Colour Out of Space'."[7] The Quabbin Reservoir was planned as early as 1895, although not actually implemented until the late 1930s, after the story was published."

Are you familiar with the works of HP Lovecraft? In one of his stories the narrator is a surveyor for a new reservoir for the fictional city of Arkham, which was going to flood several towns. I wonder if this reservoir inspired him? The timing is right, he wrote the story in the early 1930s if I recall correctly.